The hit ITV drama Broadchurch was never intended as a whodunit, its creator
Chris Chibnall tells Michael Hogan, as he plans the sequel.

It’s the morning after Monday night, when more than nine million viewers watched ITV’s Broadchurch reach its toe-curling, cheek-dampening climax, and the drama’s creator, Chris Chibnall, is calling the Telegraph from a familiar beach: “Rather ridiculously, as we speak I’m on the sand at West Bay [the Dorset village where the series was filmed]. I don’t stand here in situ all the time, I promise, but at least it will give the Telegraph the full Broadchurch atmosphere.”

Chibnall, hitherto best known for writing five episodes of Doctor Who, is as surprised as anyone that he’s created ITV’s biggest new drama since Downton Abbey. “I really didn’t expect it to take off on this scale. My parents rang to tell me that people in their GP’s surgery were asking them who the Broadchurch killer was. I overheard people discussing it on the bus. It’s been bonkers – wonderfully bewildering and very humbling.”

Broadchurch began with the murder of 11-year-old Danny Latimer and we discovered his killer’s identity early in the eighth and final episode. “That was very deliberate,” explains Chibnall. “Structurally, I always wanted the reveal to come 10 minutes in, before the first ad break, so that we had time to see the aftermath. I know it sounds crazy, but the show was never intended to be a whodunit. It was always about the tragedy’s impact on the community. The murder-mystery element was the engine that drove the story forward, buying us space to explore the emotional side.”

Many viewers suspected the killer would turn out to be Joe Miller, husband of detective Ellie (Olivia Colman), but Chibnall isn’t disappointed by correct predictions. Quite the contrary: “I was pleased, even though the bookies probably did quite well out of it. It was never meant to be a big twist. If you watched the series carefully enough, you were supposed to be able to guess.

“Little clues were there all along. For example, the slug that Ellie squashes in the finale was first shown on their carpet in episode two – a metaphor that there’s an intruder in the house. The lyrics to the end credits theme song, So Close, are all written from Ellie’s point of view. And Joe was always seen with children, often near skateboards. Things were hidden in plain sight.”

Paedophilia is a delicate area for primetime – did ITV balk at that element of Broadchurch? “I was never warned off it. We were very careful and did a lot of research into this issue. Broadchurch was all about shades of grey, both in characters and storytelling, and I wanted to see that through to the end. There’s ambiguity, complexity, no easy answers. It was important because [the paedophilia] debate becomes black-and-white very quickly. Joe and Danny’s relationship wasn’t at a sexual stage but might well have ended up there.”

Much has been written about Broadchurch’s debt to Scandinavian dramas like The Killing, but Chibnall insists: “It hasn’t been said by me! My influences stretch further back to Murder One, the Steven Bochco series in the mid-Nineties, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Having said that, The Killing and The Bridge probably did open doors at the commissioning level. A decade ago, everything was about episodic storytelling, finished within the hour. The Killing didn’t influence my writing, but was helpful in getting this type of slow-burning series made.”

Another major influence goes much further back: “You can’t really write about Dorset without following in some big footsteps and I’m a huge Thomas Hardy fan. Like Hardy’s novels, Broadchurch was a tragedy waiting to unravel. His line that 'people are unknowable’ was key to the whole series.”

Chibnall’s next project on air is a BBC dramatisation of The Great Train Robbery, to go out in August. Then he’ll sit down to write Broadchurch 2 – a surprise sequel announced to viewers on Monday night.

What can he tell us about it? “During the very first meeting I had with Peter Fincham [ITV’s director of television], I pitched the idea for Broadchurch and added with great bravado that if people liked it, there was another story we could do afterwards. Of course, I never thought for a moment that would happen. It will be a very different type of story, rather than chasing ratings or repeating what we’ve already done. It will be bold and surprise people. We’re in the background research stage at the moment.” He says it is too early to say if stars David Tennant and Colman will be returning.

And in the immediate future? “I’m off for breakfast now to fight off a hangover. I watched the last episode go out live with my wife, some friends and a bottle of gin. I wasn’t so much celebrating as drinking to steady my nerves. Peter Fincham never asked me the identity of the killer, he just said, 'Please don’t make it a s--- ending.’ So no pressure there. Luckily, it seemed to work out OK.”